Government closes voter gap: poll

I moved here last year after 1 year of negotiations. The income tax take is quite high but in all I like the system, country and people very much.

I have created jobs in the company I work for and brought work back into the country that was previously outsourced. This is only the beginning and there could be so much more to follow. The point I would like to make is this, at current levels it is just financially bearable and worthwile to continue here. If the left-green party are elected, they will of course punish people like me whether or not they will admit that. I would certainly leave, but with a heavy heart because this would mean I would have to change all the projects that would have benefitted Sweden enormously and take them elsewhere. I would of course mean unsettling my family again just when we are starting to feel at home.

I sincerely hope the left-green party are not elected, but as an immigrant I respect the fact that it really has nothing to do with me and the Swedish people will choose what is best for them and their country.

Beynch wants Jimmie Åkesson as fuhrer of a one party state controlled by the Sverige demokraterna. Or maybe the SD have become too soft for him in recent years.

It's disappointing that the gap has narrowed here but it is going up and down constantly and almost every poll has consistently put the left ahead. And clearly it's the opposition who have the better politics after 3 and a half years of right-wing chaos. I just hope people can set aside their scepticism of Mona Sahlin as a person. She might not be the most charismatic of politicians but that doesn't she'd be a bad Prime Minister. Certainly she's got to be better than the useless Reinfeldt.

What must be worrying for both sides is how close some of the parties are to the 4% barrier:

The Centre Party 4.8%

Christian Democrats 4.4%

Left Party 4.6%

Could potentially all find themselves out of Parliament which would really shake up the results

Well my apologies if you have nothing to do with the SD but you certainly talk like a right-wing fanatic, calling the Social Democrats a 'Marxist' party for believing in mild wealth redistribution and wanting to prevent the complete destruction of the welfare state. Cutting back the state even further is certainly not the answer to anything and every single time the right has tried that in Sweden they've brought about chaos and mass unemployment - from 1976 to 1982, 1991 to 1994 and then 2006 to now. Let's hope that we see a change of government this year so the left can again begin the long task of repairing the damage which has been inflicted upon the Swedish people in the interests of a small, rich elite.

Well, as I know, socialism has diferent meaning in the western thought than in East-Europe. I am from Hungary, and we used "socialism" to name our past system (instead of "communism" which means an utopic post scarcity society, where is no money, because everybody gets the goods and services that are needed).

Socialism wasn't so bad that you think. In Hungary very many of the people remember the past system with good feeling, as it was more humanistic in many meaning than our present capitalism. Yes, during the socialism you had less freedom. For example you were forced to have job. Now you are free to be unemployed. You had to live somewhere. Now you are allowed to sleep in the street. We weren't rich, however what we had, that was dependable. Theatre, movie, opera, literature, education, healthcare was very affordable. Although collective farms were created by state force, later they were flourishing: tractors were so common, that my mother hasn't seen peasant ploughing with horse - now we see. There was a mass-organisation for youth, the Pioneers, which didn't let the youth to get into bad ways. There were hundreds of youth clubs with fizzling life. Now children are free to watch violence on TV, to form street gangs or neo-nazi groups (quite serious infection of our present society), abuse metamphetamine...

Although Sweden was always very far from socialist system - as you didn't have secret political police, one-party system, omnipresent state bureaucracy - your welfare state, social solidarity were closer to our socialist ideals than the socialist countries. The leftist Sweden is the sample for us from the '60s. Be very-very proud of it!

A left-Green party in power sounds like a total disaster. I the "the fonz" summed it up best. Sweden now has many small companies in start-up, its helping the economy going since many of the "big boys" are leaving for cheaper shores. Small companies will be crushed by higher taxes. The taxes are already at an EU high, why put them higher? It makes no sense. Higher taxes leads to less jobs (as employees become more expensive, as well as employees paying extra taxes, employers have also to) so small companies will be forced to cut their workforce.

This centre party is doing some crazy things sure, but surely its the lesser of two evils?

Maybe its a trick like in Ireland, drive taxes up, so that there is mass emigration, this will mean the number of unemployed people decreases, simply because everyone left!

And finally we saw the chance of reform of the nany state control of apotek and systembullst, that will be reversed, less opening hours, greater restrictions.

When the bag lady talks about higher taxes, which taxes exacly? Income taxes, Comporation taxes, VAT? Sweden is already at bordeline high taxes on all of these. And increase in VAT will see exports fall and spending fall. An increas in Corporation taxes will see foreign investors pull out of Sweden (eg SAAB and Volvo- Chinese and Dutch)

I hope an economist questions her on her rather simplistic view of higher taxes will take money off the rich.. These "rich" people wont be living in Sweden! Why would they want to?

Must you show us the handbag again?

It is strange that the party with the most votes is in the opposition.....

ha ha

On one hand; it's great to see the racist party loose support.

On the other hand, it's rough to see the traitors in charge gaining a bit of support. Still, I expect the wannabe-liberals of the Social Democrats to gather enough support with the Green Party and Left Party to throw the traitors out of the government.

Reading these blogs is a great encouragement to me!

I had begun to think that everybody is ending up in the political centre and our elections will be always a tightly-run race with the narrowest of margins.

But I can see the gap between left and right (red and blue) is as wide as ever!

And thank goodness!

Once the Swedish people get to see, over the next 6 months, the long-term positive changes the Alliance has introduced since 2006, it´s going to give Mr Reinfeldt a healthy majority that may not even need the Swedish Democrats help.

I invite you to sit in the public balcony at the Riksdag (like I have done many times) and listen to the debates there - it is plainly obvious who has got the most balanced policies and who has got the authority to deal sensibly with Sweden´s problems.

If you´re thinking of voting red/green in September, please think again.

agree with stuartM..lies n lies by reindfielt..

I'm always disappointed by how news outlets report on these polls. If you go to Synovate's site and download the report you can read: "I förhållande till decembermätningen håller sig förändringarna inom de statistiska felmarginalerna."

The changes since december are within the margin of error in the poll (phone interviews with 2700 people).

Do the reporters think their readers are too stupid to understand simple statistics (perhaps they don't understand it themselves?), or are they just desperate to make trick them into thinking the news are more important?